Taste of Death

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Session 1

In Medias Res

15

DEC/12

The group started out tumbling into an excavation in a wooden cage. Steve, you see, killed a would be rapist and, in a hilarious mixup, ended up getting everyone sentenced to Trial By Grossly Unfair Combat. Whoops.

The excavation was a ruined temple to a dead god that the authorities had stocked with goblins. Around the sides of the pit, a crowd was cheering on . . . well, neither side in particular. Violence. They were cheering on violence.

Steve busted the gate open and ably started swatting goblin heads off of goblin necks. Tosaka jumped into the fight with a Magic Missile volley, but the floor of the temple, concealed under the dirt, was rotten and gave way. Happily, Cassius had been keeping an eye on her and lept out, knocking her to safety and falling into the temple catacombs himself. It was dark, but he spotted stairs going back up. He also heard growling.

Dude wasn’t alone in there for long. DRUID had turned into a wolf and tackled a goblin right down into the pit, killing the thing. Tosaka went down a bit less gracefully in an effort to dodge a goblin’s arrow, she got tangled up in the old beams that were jutting out around the hole to the catacombs. Poor wizard had to leave her spellbook behind when she dropped down. And that’s not even as bad as it gets for her. She did bust out a light spell, revealing the pack of growling ghouls. They were NOT fans of the light.

Steve took out a few more goblins before following them down, landing smack on top of one of the ghouls as Cassius commanded them to be gone. They refused, but it gave him an edge in fighting them. DRUID made for the stairs, but the trap door was blocked and covered in dirt. Not the kind of thing you can open while you are a wolf. Compounding his problems, a ghoul got in behind him and cut him off from the others.

Again with the protecting, Cassius stabbed the living shit out of the ghoul. It went crazy on him too, though, clawing through his armor and making a sick mess out of his sword arm’s tendons. Simultaneously, Steve brought his hammer down on a ghoul’s back, snapping it in half. That didn’t stop the ghoul from munching on his ankle, though.

Tosaka kept trading shots with the goblins around the hole, eventually deciding to make a deal with them over Steve and the guard’s shouted objections. They’d team up against the guards that threw them both in here, but the goblins would get Tosaka’s spell book as a hostage until it was all over.

The city guard descended into the pit to cut this business short. You can’t have both sides of a death sport sign a peace treaty. That totally defeats the purpose. Tosaka couldn’t contribute too much to the fight, though, because she spotted her sister’s dismembered hand in the ghoul corpse pile. So she was mostly screaming for a little bit there.

DRUID turned into a bear and started bear mauling the guards who, in turn, were just kicking Steve’s ass. Dude was not getting a break. He eventually rallied, though. As did Tosaka.

Having defeated the guards watching over them, Tosaka attempted to summon the spirit of her sister. Surprisingly, there was no answer. Cassius did some poking around, and found an ancient holy symbol. Presumably, it was to whatever god they used to worship in the temple. Having caught their breath, the party go Tosaka’s spell book back and split for the woods.